Talk:IPCC claims about Himalayan glaciers were not based on science

Notes

The original IPCC report used to be at this address (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-6-2.html/) but they seem to have taken it down. --SVTCobra 00:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• Why so many sources? I see no need for the last on on the email hacking incident - nothing from it is used anywhere within the article. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I reviewed my work. Besides the WSJ source (the degree of use is discussed below), I did use all the listed sources. Cheers, --SVTCobra 01:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• Know your Google cache. ;-) --Brian McNeil / ^talk 00:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Brian. I'll add the cache as an external. The WSJ story from Nov was added to substantiate the final paragraph of the article. Though the issue was mentioned in one other source, but they didn't attribute or explain. If the reviewer finds the WSJ article excessive or unnecessary, they can remove it from sources before publishing. Cheers, --SVTCobra 00:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• I've seen several of the leaked emails, I'm concerned that last paragraph mischaracterises them. Remember the campaign on Wikinews to highlight them in terms of being "trickery"? That's false. It was, as I saw it, a frank exchange between two climatologists referring to a modelling technique or mathematical translation generally accepted as a fairly credible part of the science as a "trick". Yes, they were quite, quite nasty about various of the people who shout the loudest that there's no evidence of global warming/climate change. There was nothing substantive in the leaked emails that data was being faked. The amplified controversy related to them being frank, blunt, and cynical about "deniers". --Brian McNeil / ^talk 01:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I really attempted to word that paragraph neutrally ... can you really say that it is a mischaracterization? (I missed the "campaign" as I was truly inactive during the COP15). Was the IPCC not under fire for e-mails that appeared to show the suppression of conflicting findings? (I'll add the word "appeared" to the article, hoping that will suffice.) Cheers, --SVTCobra 01:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• The people that shouted loudest about the emails are those who don't want to even have a debate on climate change. This is probably a good starting point. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 03:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Starting point for what??? Could someone please review the article, thank you. --SVTCobra 15:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Review of revision 941627 [Passed]

Revision 941627 of this article has been reviewed by RockerballAustralia (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 06:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: None added. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 941627 of this article has been reviewed by RockerballAustralia (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 06:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: None added. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Slant?

There's a bit of a weird slant in this article -

A 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which claimed that the glaciers in the Himalayas were likely to melt within thirty years, was at least in part not based on scientific data

...if you hadn't seen the story before, you'd assume the IPCC published a now-discredited report entitled something like "Future Prospects for the Himalayas to 2050. It's not unless you follow through to the sources that it becomes clear it's a section of a larger document, the bulk of which is tangential to the story. The article refers to "the report" throughout, describing people as making general criticisms of it, but makes no distinction between the reporting of a single claim, and the report, a thousand-page document, as a whole.

As a result, I don't think we're accurately representing the people quoted, and the situation as a whole. For example, we say Ramesh originally "criticised the report"; according to the AP, he criticised "the panel's initial assessment of the Himalayan glaciers", and his position on the remainder of the report is unstated. The IPCC statement is particularly odd; they say:

a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.

and we quote two sections, missing out their caveats such as "the paragraph in question", and transferring a criticism of the source to a criticism of the report:

The IPCC, a United Nations panel, admitted that the report was "poorly substantiated" and that "well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly" in the preparation of the report.

I'm really not convinced we're presenting the facts of the case straightforwardly here. Shimgray (talk) 09:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• I've made some alterations - emphasising "claim" over "report", to try to bring out the difference between the comment under debate and the report irself - but there's still a few worrying issues. Looking at the sources, it feels cherry-picked - we quote Zemp as being quite negative, for example, whilst the CNN story was careful to include him saying that he felt the glaciers were good indicators for change. Shimgray (talk) 09:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• This, you might note, was the point I was trying to make above. The "story" is manufactured and manipulated by right-wing media and, I'm afraid, people here have fallen for it. The news - if you can call it that - is that one line on one page in a huge report was alarmist. Why do you think this sat unreviewed for so long? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 10:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• Mmmm. I've made some more extensive changes, trying to replace direct-but-misleading quotes with a broader synthesis, and added context as to what the claim was. I haven't put anything in about the "it was originally a typo for 2350" suggestion, as I'm not sure how much that's just hypothesis. The remaining problem now, I think, is the title - it's not strictly speaking inaccurate, but it does seem a bit... pointed. Shimgray (talk) 11:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Share via Facebook

Hi There

the Share via facebook link gives a description for a completely different story with this headline...is this a bug?

Its picking a line out of the related articles. Facebook (not us) chooses what they take as an excerpt, so it is more a bug on their end (but the end result is bad for us). Bawolff ☺☻ 23:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Unsighted edits

I have noticed that this article has been significantly altered from what I submitted for review ... that's perfectly fine, this is a collaborative site after all. I do find it weird that many of these edits have gone unsighted for many hours. The edits are so substantial that I question whether they were based on the listed sources, but I haven't the time to verify. But why no sighting? Was interest lost? --SVTCobra 03:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• I saw it sitting waiting for a re-review, I avoided it because the items added were, I felt, something needing addressed by you. I tried to point out above that the crap about the emails was just that, crap; I tried to highlight that there was a certain media "spin" being put on this story. How much of a kerfuffle would there have been if I'd edited in and sighted what I thought were reasonable additions? Please, start looking a lot more critically at the sources you read; look beyond the headlines and you will see a lot more "Ministry of Disinformation" pronouncements telling you what to be afraid of, or what to be angry about. If I pop the tinfoil hat on, well, this is a missive from the people who, like Sarah Palin, want floodlit night jetskiing and steaks cooked over an electric grill on the patio, with the heaters on, in sub-zero temperatures.

Now, if there's nothing pressing demanding my attention, I'll get back to my more-than-twenty-year-old-mission to have the UK's first female Prime Minister burned at the stake. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)